Movie review: 'Hunger' depicts Bobby Sands' starvation crusade

Al Alexander

Friday

Mar 27, 2009 at 12:01 AMMar 27, 2009 at 10:21 PM

History shows that Sands’ 66-day hunger strike in the spring of 1981 worked, paving the way for prisoner rights and laying a cornerstone for concessions that led to the 1997 Northern Ireland peace agreement.

In “Hunger,” British artist Steve McQueen paints famed IRA martyr Bobby Sands as a Christ figure willing to die for the sins of humanity.

Some may differ with that assessment, especially if you’re aware that Sands starved himself to death merely to drum up support for a waning cause through what Maggie Thatcher called a last resort, “pity.”

But it’s hard to take issue when history shows that Sands’ 66-day hunger strike in the spring of 1981 worked, paving the way for prisoner rights and laying a cornerstone for concessions that led to the 1997 Northern Ireland peace agreement.

So, you might ask, what does that have to do with today? And why is McQueen reopening old wounds? Well, look no further than the twin U.S. embarrassments of Abu Ghraib and Gitmo.

McQueen never flinches in his graphic depictions of these shocking abuses of power and authority, but you might. It’s ugly and it shakes you to the bone.

Yet even if you don’t agree with the practices and beliefs of the IRA, you can’t help but admire the courage and tenacity of the inmates in fighting for what they believe. And what they believed more than anything (and what Sands and nine of his comrades died for) was their right to be treated like prisoners of war instead of common criminals.

Thatcher and the administrators at Belfast’s notorious Maze prison thought otherwise. And the more the prisoners protested, the more they dished out the punishment.

Something McQueen duly notes as he bombards you with haunting images of prisoners lying naked in unlit cells caked with feces and reeking from the jars of urine they’ve stored up to dump into the prison’s halls. One can only imagine the stench, the filth, and the misery.

McQueen practically rubs your nose in it while making many a valid point about how the body and its functions are the only defense, or for that matter, leverage, a prisoner possesses.

It’s fascinating to be sure, but it’s hardly entertaining. Nor is it emotionally stirring given how little McQueen and his co-writer Enda Walsh provide in the way of drama and character development.

With the exception of the film’s centerpiece – a riveting 22-minute, one-take, single-shot conversation between a priest (Liam Cunningham) and Sands (Michael Fassbender) as he’s about to embark on his hunger strike, the movie is largely just a succession of images.

They range from something as static as a prisoner marveling at a fly to something as horrifying as a full-out beat-down by the guards. Yet the scenes all share a basic truth about what it is to believe in something so strongly, you’re willing to die for it. It’s the hunger that “Hunger” is all about.